[HN Gopher] Show HN: Avo - Build Ruby on Rails apps faster ___________________________________________________________________ Show HN: Avo - Build Ruby on Rails apps faster Author : adrianthedev Score : 235 points Date : 2022-06-21 15:14 UTC (7 hours ago) (HTM) web link (avohq.io) (TXT) w3m dump (avohq.io) | MattyMc wrote: | adrianthedev: THANK YOU for implementing a one-time fee. It | actually make using this realistic for us. | | Quick question: Do you have support for front-end frameworks | (i.e. React)? I did try to crawl the docs to find out. | | We have a Rails monolith, but we're unique in that we have a | highly interactive educational app with a boat load of | javascript. Our mantra has been: use React only if we absolutely | have to. I realize we're unique in this regard. | | Totally cool if not; just thought I'd ask. Great work on the | project! | adrianthedev wrote: | Thanks for the kind words! | | Avo is built using Hotwire (Turbo and StimulusJS) so no fancy | framework (React, vue, svelte) under the hood. We love Stimulus | and goes very well with Rails development. | | That beign said, Avo supports adding your own custom content | (erb templates) and your own asset pipeline (webpacker, | sprockets, or something else), so in theory you could inject | React or Vue sprinkles here and there. | bradgessler wrote: | It's great to see folks building frameworks on top of frameworks. | I've started to look into full stack starter-kit frameworks that | goes beyond the admin panel and here's what's out there these | days. | | * https://bullettrain.co - Opensource, $0/year | | * https://jumpstartrails.com - Opencore, $249/year | | * https://www.bootrails.com - Closed source, ~$83/year | | I've even started to piece on together for my own projects at | https://github.com/rocketshipio/monolith, which will be open | source, $0, and MIT licensed. | | Some of the libraries I'm noticing that seem "settled" include: | | * Devise for authentication | | * Pundit for authorization | | I started to piece on together for my own projects at | https://github.com/rocketshipio/monolith, which will be open | source, $0, and MIT licensed. | | I'm hoping enough people converge around any one of these | products where we end up with something as high quality as Rails. | If the community agrees on how users, authorization, | subscriptions, etc. should be modeled, it opens up the door for a | set of APIs and plugins that will make creating SaaS products | even easier. | | My thinking on the economics of this is the Opencore stuff will | be a race to the bottom in terms of pricing towards free or a | nominal fee (I guess $250/year is that). What will end up costing | money is tech support. I do see an ecosystem of third-party | services that integrate with SaaS kits emerging, such as rapid | ways to deploy, analytics services, etc. | mediaman wrote: | Can I drop this into an existing Rails app? I use Jumpstart but | would like a nicer admin experience. | Simpliplant wrote: | Yes, very easily. | adrianthedev wrote: | Yes you can. Our site uses Jumpstart (lovely app) and we use | Avo everyday with it. | | Avo was designed to be unopinionated. I know that might sound | off. Avo has a DSL, it must be opinionated, and it is with that | DSL, but with the rest, we'd like to allow the developer to use | what they want. | | BYOB. | | Bring your own authentication. You might not want to use | devise, but something else. Avo enables you to add your own | auth layer. | | Bring your own search. Avo plays well with ransack, but you can | hook into it and do your thing with algolia or something else. | | Bring your own layer of multi tenancy. Scope things out as much | as you need it. We have a customer that runs three platforms in | one app using Avo. Believe me when I say they were able to | scope out their data "to the bone". | | So yeah. Avo plays amazingly well with existing apps. It was | designed that way. | adrianthedev wrote: | I mentioned this before, that I spoke with Chris Oliver, and | started work on bringing Avo inside Jumpstart rails as an | alternative to rails admin. | victor9000 wrote: | Any similar back office projects written in python? I'd like to | reuse some existing data access code and I'm currently looking at | using django. So I'd love to hear if others have a better | suggestion. | adrianthedev wrote: | I wouldn't know. I'm not that connected with the Python | ecosystem. Maybe someone else can shed light. I only know about | Django Admin. | martibravo wrote: | This looks so good... I've been always using Node, Deno or .NET | Core for backend infrastructure, but Avo makes me wanna learn | Ruby and RoR and make the jump for client-related work. Congrats! | adrianthedev wrote: | It's not that difficult. Really. I have a developer friend that | comes from Node.JS world and is amazed how quickly he can build | apps with Rails. | | I'd love talk to you if you ever want to try it out. | adrianthedev wrote: | Hey HN, | | I'm Adrian, an indie developer and creator of Avo. For more than | ten years, I built countless admin panels and back-offices for | all types of apps. After a while, you start to notice patterns | and extract functionality away to make the job easier. I took | those patterns and applied them to Avo. Now, in just an hour, a | developer can build production-ready applications that with | traditional coding techniques take a few days, if not weeks. | | Avo is suited to agencies that build a lot of products for their | clients and need to move fast and have a beautiful and robust UI, | indie developers trying to test out their ideas fast, technical | teams in companies of all sizes that need to build internal tools | based on Ruby, and start-ups. | | Avo runs on top of Ruby on Rails, which is a powerhouse of a | framework and uses the most modern tech stack (Hotwire, | TailwindCSS, esbuild). | | Avo has three main parts that you can choose from: | | 1. The CRUD UI | | 2. The Dashboards UI | | 3. The custom content | | The CRUD UI is not something generated that takes maintenance in | the long run. Instead, it's a familiar Ruby DSL that's easy to | extend with Rails code if you need to break away from it. It | features about 30 fields with more advanced ones like (one-liner) | file uploads, WYSIWYG, and key-value fields. | | The Dashboards are a light layer on top of chartkick where one | can query the data from the DB or an endpoint and quickly show | the data in metrics, charts, or custom partials. | | The Custom Content part is the secret sauce of Avo. It enables | the developer to extend it even further using regular Rails code. | You get access to partials, controller, action, params, and | anything else you need to bring your own logic into the UI on | every level (field, resource, tool). | | Avo has a free Community version that features the powerful CRUD | UI, and a paid Pro version for those who need more power and | custom content. We also provide technical support for enterprise- | like customers. | | I know that Rails devs will immediately think of Active Admin, | administrate, and other similar projects, and I want to mention | that Avo is not them. It's built on a modern stack, and its | mission is to become the back-office app and not just an "obscure | admin panel that only the core team visits". I don't want to seem | harsh, but I challenge non-believers to give Avo an hour of their | time to see how it's different. | | TBH, I believe Avo is the secret weapon in any developer's | toolbox. | | I'm here to answer all of your questions. | | Thank you | adrianthedev wrote: | If you want to keep up with updates you can reach us on | Twitter[0], Discord[1], or GitHub[2] | | [0] https://twitter.com/avo_hq [1] https://avo.cool/chat [2] | https://github.com/avo-hq/avo [3] | https://twitter.com/adrianthedev | highwaylights wrote: | "I don't want to seem harsh, but I challenge non-believers to | give Avo an hour of their time to see how it's different. | | TBH, I believe Avo is the secret weapon in any developer's | toolbox." | | Earnestly, I wish you well. These are rather bold claims. | adrianthedev wrote: | I was on the fence if I should add those in, but I'm kind of | glad I did. | | I feel a little bit like Taylor Otwell in the old days when | he was telling people about Laravel, or Evan You back in the | day when you'd search for "JS framework" and you'd only get | React and Angular. | | They were on the verge of something new and useful, but | nobody believed. I think developers, in general, are pretty | inflexible when it comes to new things (only my oppinion), | that's why I wanted to add those. | | It's obvious that Avo is not the silver bullet for any app | and has caveats in some scenarios. All tools do (Rails, | Laravel, NextJS, django, spring, you fill in the rest), but | for most apps it really does give you superpowers. You build | apps 10x faster and the maintenance work is second to none. | And in the end, you get a beautiful app ready to present to | your customers or team. | | Thank you for the encouragement! I need it :) | JohnBooty wrote: | I haven't used Avo, but if it works well, I think it's an | appropriate claim. | | I've worked in the industry for a while and admin pages / | reports usually being _at least_ 50% of the effort. | Sometimes, it 's more like 90%. | | So, there's a lot of potential impact there. | adrianthedev wrote: | Yes brother! I remember the days when I was building "an | internal admin for the agency". Something to have for all | apps and customers. | | We'd build it for customer 1, and then for customer 2 | we'd add some features and change some. Same for customer | 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. After a few years we ended up with 10 | different apps that should be the same. No documentation, | sometimes the developer that worked on the app is no | longer with the company, a real mess. | | This way, it would be like using Rails. Documentation, | release, maintenance, the whole shebang! | | Thanks for sharing! | tomhallett wrote: | When I was skimming your homepage I was thinking "I really | wish this was built on Hotwire" and then I saw that it was. | That architecture choice makes me think your bold claims | might actually pan out, :). | | The fact that the ways to customize/escape are "vanilla | rails" and avo is deployed within my app as an engine, make | this very very interesting. | | As compared to: | | * something like retool which is deployed (ie hosted) as an | additional layer which calls an api my app exposes. Great | for huge organizations, but overkill for a small team | (similar to SPA vs Hotwire tradeoff) | | * activeadmin where escaping the standard path is extremely | hard. Not to mention it's built on gems which are no longer | in favor (inherited resources, etc) | | * administrate which I really enjoyed, but felt like the | support/roadmap was more of a side project vs an "open | core/commercial offering" | adrianthedev wrote: | Thank you for the kind analysis! I see you understand the | product very well from the start! Yes, it's built with | the knowledge of past projects you mentioned above and is | deisgned to be very easily "escaped from". I know that | "escaped from" might sound like you're trapped, but the | experience is not that. Avo works with you to build the | app you want. | | Looking forward to see what you're going to build, and | get in touch with me on Discord or Twitter. | | https://avo.cool/chat | | https://twitter.com/adrianthedev | andrewmutz wrote: | How does your offering compare to Jumpstart Rails | (https://jumpstartrails.com/)? Are they competitors? If so, | what are the pros/cons of Avo? | adrianthedev wrote: | They are orthogonal tools. They blend together nicely. I use | both on our infrastructure. | | Jumpstart is an amazing starter kit (starter kit doesn't do | it justice) that gives you accounts, billing, notifications, | etc. and Avo takes it over and gives you the ability to build | your admin panel/back-office fast AF. It's like you replace | rails_admin from Jumpstart. | | I've spoken with Chris Oliver and started work on adding Avo | to Jumpstart and to have it as an alternative to rails_admin. | latsnoopy wrote: | Hi! Is it possible to have multi language support? | (translations of records, think globalize) | adrianthedev wrote: | The UI is fully translatable and you can hook into the | localization system and have multilingual content too. | | https://docs.avohq.io/2.0/recipes/multilingual-content.html | schappim wrote: | Could you please compare and contrast Avo with Jumpstart Rails | (Pro)? | adrianthedev wrote: | Yes, sure. | | They are tools that work together nicely. I use both on our | infrastructure websites (https://avohq.io). Jumpstart is an | amazing starter app that gives you accounts, billing, | notifications, and others, and with Avo you can take over and | build your admin panel/back-office fast! | | I've spoken with Chris Oliver and started work on adding Avo | to Jumpstart and to have it as an alternative to rails_admin. | excid3 wrote: | Yeah, Avo is a great alternative to the free admin we ship | with (Administrate). And Jumpstart Pro customers get 20% | off their first year of Avo. Thanks for sharing that | discount Adrian! | adrianthedev wrote: | Yeah, my bad there. Jumpstart ships with Administrate, | not rails admin. | | I'm humbled to have built something that could ship with | Jumpstart. Thank you for the kind words! | weaksauce wrote: | Is there a reason jumpstart runs on madmin and jumpstart | pro runs on administrate? | picardo wrote: | Why did you call it Avo? I'm curious because I know of at least | 4 SaaS companies called Avo. | adrianthedev wrote: | The original name was project Avocado, but I didn't find any | good domain names and social media handles. I agree the | naming could have been better. | 0des wrote: | I like it. Its better than naming it something with "rails" | embedded like "trailsblazer". | vlunkr wrote: | Shouldn't the tagline be more like "Build Ruby on Rails admin | panels 10x faster"? Since that seems to be the intent. | adrianthedev wrote: | When one says "admin panel", the general belief is that it's an | obscure space where only the core team comes to check on some | stats, or update some records. Avo is more about building a | real app with it. It's meant to be what the user sees when they | interact with your app. You actually build your app with Avo. | Avo becomes the app. | | When I talk to Rails developers and mention the words "admin | panel", they automatically think about Active Admin, or | administrate, which were great alternatives in the past, but | nothing compared to Avo (apologies, sounds like I'm bragging, | but I'm really not exaggerating). That's the reason I don't | communicate that. | | I have a "Rails admin themed" page[0] where I speak more about | the benefits as a Rails admin. | | https://avohq.io/rails-admin | matt_s wrote: | For something like this, I bet a chunk of your target market for | "Pro" level is people running ActiveAdmin. The beauty (and | nightmare) of ActiveAdmin is it just looks at your tables and | gives you an admin UI. If you have a mostly API based app, this | can be great to give internal people some power tools so they | leave the engineers alone. | | Would love to see demos with real world complexity level of | things instead of the typical Blog or Todo list trackers. To give | that some scope for a complex Rails application lets use counts | of objects, something like 100 models and 80 active admin pages, | scatter in some 50-100 jobs/workers and like 50-100 service | objects. | | What does Avo provide for a menu-ing or UI customization to deal | with that level of complexity? | adrianthedev wrote: | I would say that the Community version (free) covers most of | what Active Admin does. The search is paid with Avo (and | included in AA). | | The Pro users are those who need to build upon Avo. They need | custom content (fields, resource tools, custom pages), and they | need to make it look the same as the rest of the app. Avo | provides view components that help with that. This way you | create a seamless UI for your users. | | I think of Avo as more than just and admin panel framework | (although power tool sounds great), but the place where you | build your app. It becomes the app your users see. | | Regarding API based apps, yeah, that's something I'd loke to | support soon. Offer HTTP adapters where you coudl hook in your | Stripe/Shopify/Intercom/Custom API endpoints. | | Regarding complexity, I tried to cram as much as I could | (whenever I push out a new feature, I add it) to the demo | site[0]. | | One of the biggest apps I've seen has about 41 resources, 431 | fields, and quite some complexity because it's a multi tenancy | app that serves three marketplace platforms. There's a lot of | complex scoping applied to the data to match the accounts and | views. | | But, yeah, I'd love to see an app that size. I think the | project is still young (about two years. version 2.0 three | months old) and these kinds of projects tend to get built out | with time. I can't imagine there are a lot of teams with an app | that size you mentioned that are in a hurry to rip out | everything they have to replace it with Avo (or any other | package or app) in such a short time. Even our customers above | are slowly switching from their homegrown admin panel to Avo. | | Right now, the UI customization wasn't our main concern. I do | want it to look amazing so I work a lot (alongside the | designer) to keep it looking excellent. This being Rails, you | can always override the partials and view components to add | your own and tweak Avo's. The first iteration of UI | customization will be to enable the developer to change the | colors of the UI. | | Regarding general customization, you can already plug in Avo on | multiple levels. One can add new fields, sections on resource | pages, totally new custom pages, etc. | | Avo is ready for customization complexity. | | [0] https://avodemo.herokuapp.com/ | danneciu wrote: | Amazing! Keep up to good job Adrian! Really like the features you | ship every week. | adrianthedev wrote: | Thanks Dan! I appreciate the support and the kind words | stickyricky wrote: | Brilliant work. Looks terrific. Very easy, declarative interface. | adrianthedev wrote: | Thank you Ricky! I appreciate the kind words. | turriblegrapes wrote: | How would you compare or contrast this with motor_admin | https://github.com/motor-admin/motor-admin-rails | adrianthedev wrote: | I haven't used motor admin extensively so I couldn't speak | about it's features very precise. It seems to me that motor | admin is like a giving a power tool to your end-users. It's | empowering the citizen-developer. They can make their own admin | panel. You might end up with a good product, but it also can go | the other way and build something not that good. | | With Avo, you, the developer, draw the lines on what the user | can and can't do. This way you make sure you give them the best | experience. | jmann99999 wrote: | I am excited to see more of these Frameworks on top of Frameworks | happening. Folks interested in this may also want to check out | Bullet Train [0]. They are also a Rails Framework/Framework. I | believe they started out with a pricing model that was more | expensive than this but have pivoted to open source. | | I appreciate Bullet Train's opinionated idea that APIs and | webhooks should be part of any project and they have built it in. | Anyhow, it's worth checking out, in addition to Avo. | | [0] https://bullettrain.co/ | adrianthedev wrote: | Yeah, I mentioned bullettrain somewhere in a comment below. | It's an amazing SaaS starter kit. | | As far as I know, they have some things as open source and some | not. Not sure if they published the pricing for the | subscription packages though. A lot of people are wondering | what that's going to cost. | | I used Avo with Jumpstart and they go together wonderfull. | Probably with bullettrain too. | jressey wrote: | This is a serious question: Do any of you folks get paid good | money to _start_ projects? In my career I have "started" | projects for maybe 2-5% of my time. All of the real effort goes | in to massaging the app to actually solve unique business | problems, about 80-90% on edge cases. | | Bold and cynical claim: Making and selling apps like this is akin | to building a social media brand about building social media | brands. The problem this solves is only experienced by serial | creators who like _starting_ projects, not making useful stuff. I | personally know 2 people who are like that attempted to start | this exact same concept for a company, and that was like 6 years | ago, and it was Rails too. | vladcodes wrote: | > Making and selling apps like this is akin to building a | social media brand about building social media brands | | So much this. | | I really can't understand all the excitement above, unless | you're starting a new proof of concept daily (but then, the | price looks ridiculous) and you're ready for the "buy now - pay | later" way of development. If "move fast break things" is still | the thing in 2022, then it makes more sense to just draft an | MVP in html/js with something like Firestore as a backend? | adrianthedev wrote: | "draft an MVP in html/js with something like Firestore as a | backend"... so much here. It sounds easy, but is it? I | remember the days when I would get stuck on a webpacker | config issue instead of working on the real meat of my app. | | I speak weekly with developers that tell me "oh, you made an | admin panel. I could build that in a few hours. we don't need | it." and they never do. They really can't. It's a tough thing | to make something quick, reliable, and that gives you no | headaches in the short and long run. | | And, I guess the excitement is not just for building MVPs, | but in general for how much things have evolved and that we | have alternatives to copy and pasting forms and fields | around. | | I'm not going to say that everyone should use Avo. I believe | that each developer vibes with some technologies. That's why | we use ruby, PHP, JS, VSCode, vim, chrome, firefox, linux or | macs. Because we understand them, think in that way, and push | out great work with them. So yeah, if Firestore is your thing | you should use it. I'm not pointing any fingers. | vladcodes wrote: | > "oh, you made an admin panel. I could build that in a few | hours. we don't need it." and they never do. | | I was never saying making anything with any technology is | easy. | | Developing with plain Rails and a minimum of gems is | linearly difficult while developing with a set of | DSL/generators like Avo can lead to a complexity spike from | 1 to 11 in no time. And the worst thing -- at a random | stage of development. | | From the business perspective of view, I really like it: | it's a perfect example of a micro-project and I wish you | the most of luck. | adrianthedev wrote: | > "Developing with plain Rails and a minimum of gems is | linearly difficult while developing with a set of | DSL/generators like Avo can lead to a complexity spike | from 1 to 11 in no time. And the worst thing -- at a | random stage of development" | | I agree 100% with your statement! Really! | | Thank you! | adrianthedev wrote: | A very pertinent question. If you're asking if Avo "pays the | bills", it doesn't. I hope it will some day. Damn, I hope I | earn money in some other way and donate Avo to Ruby central, | becomes free so it becomes the default way of building Rails | apps. | | Until that time, I am pretty stocked that other developers want | (and pay) to use something I've created. | | Yeah, it takes a lot to build the messaging around a product. | This current message "Build apps 10x faster" is probably the | 10th or 20th iteration. I had to speak with a lot of users and | try to figure out how it helps them in their daily dev life. | | Building the product is the easy thing (for a developer), doing | the marketing, steering it into the right direction, figuring | out what the best features are, sales, funnels, etc. Those are | the difficult things. They are difficult for me because I don't | have a following. | | Regarding your "Bold and cynical claim", I respect your | opinion. I wouldn't go to say that everyone just want to build | a following and launch useless product to achieve that. | jressey wrote: | I respect your hustle and understanding of what makes a | successful product. I'm making no comment on that. | | I was in general asking the community about how often they | get paid to start apps vs. continue them. | adrianthedev wrote: | Oh, I see what you mean. What kind of "gigs" they get. | "Starters" or "continuers" (maintenance). | | Gotcha! Personally I started a lot of projects. Probably | more than 50%. And the money were good, but not as good as | doing maintenance for a big company with a big product. | pmontra wrote: | I've been working on four projects in the last 12 months. I | helped starting one of them in 2017 (Elixir / Phoenix.) I | inherited a RoR one in 2012 and two Django ones in 2016 and | 2019. | | Given the long life of projects that make money one doesn't | start many of them but being able to show something in a short | time is important. It helps to focus on features and not to get | lost in architectural yak shaving. | adrianthedev wrote: | Yak shaving. It's "my mission in life" to avoid that. I like | pushing things out fast and early. | | "Listen to your customers and push out the features they | need, not the features you think they need." | mdw wrote: | Very glad to see this, I'm currently building a SaaS with Rails | and can totally use this for our admin panel. | adrianthedev wrote: | One of our biggest supporters Equipe Technique are building a | Shopify like platform ontop of Avo. It's not their admin, but | the actual user interface, so go for it! Dream big! | gingerlime wrote: | looks neat. A quick question: you mention pundit, but we use | cancancan. Would it cause any conflicts? | adrianthedev wrote: | I'm confident there will not be conflicts. You will have to | write pundit policies to enable authorization. | | Also, I think you could make some sort of adapter between the | two. Pundit is mostly a Ruby class. | andi999 wrote: | Pricing is unclear. It has a fixed price and later talks about | subscription. How much is the subscription. | | Also at what is the frameworks strategie on locking doing | transactions in the database. | adrianthedev wrote: | Sorry about that. I'll try to make that clearer. We have an FAQ | item on teh bottom of the page. | | The pricing is per project (per app). You pay $250, and you get | one year of updates and then use it forever. | | The license is a Perpetual Fallback License. When you stop | paying for a subscription, you will still be able to keep and | use the latest version of Avo at the point in time when the | subscription ended but you will loose the ability to update to | a newer version. | | Regarding locking and doing transactions, it does not support | that, but that's a very good idea and not that difficult to add | in the near-future. Ideally to let the developer specify what | kind of locking strategies to use. | | I added this topic to keep track of. https://github.com/avo- | hq/avo/discussions/982 | danenania wrote: | The "one year of updates" thing is kind of confusing. What if | an app has a longer lifetime than that? Can you no longer get | updates to Avo? What about bugs and security updates? | | I think you're over-complicating the pricing. Why not just | say it's $250 per project per year? You can still keep the | fallback option and explain it in your FAQ. It would be more | immediately understandable this way imo. | adrianthedev wrote: | I tried that and the question that popped up was "what if I | don't pay anymore? will I not be able to use it then?". It | kind of turned people away, and that's why I change the | copy. | | If an app has a longer lifetime than a year, and I hope it | does, then you'd have to resume the subscription to get the | updates (bugs and security). It's the way the perpetual- | fallback license works. There are plenty of products (table | plus, jumpstart rails) and large companies (jetbrains) that | practice this model. I wish there was an easier way of | shipping those updates without a subscription. | danenania wrote: | I think it's a mistake to optimize for people whose focus | is what happens if they stop paying you. They're unlikely | to pay in the first place and are more likely to be | difficult customers even if they do. | | Customers who get value out of your product will want to | pay and keep paying and be sure they're not going to miss | important updates if they forget to renew in a year. | These are the customers to focus on imo. | | People are happy to pay subscriptions for software they | get continuing value from. There's no need to reinvent | the wheel on this. | nirvdrum wrote: | This is the approach JetBrains takes with their IDE suite | and it's the best of both worlds in my opinion. It takes | most of the risk out of the decision-making process. To | date I've kept my subscription active, but I probably | wouldn't have signed up if I didn't have a fallback | option. | | Maybe this is an esoteric case, but I have a project from | a previously operating business (TechStars Boston 2010). | Every now and then I think I'd like to take a nice stroll | down memory lane. And then I remember I have one | component that was an annual SaaS that I no longer have | an expensive license for, so the thing won't boot. And I | don't have the wherewithal to invest the time to replace | it. It's extremely unlikely I'll ever adopt something | similar in future projects, personal or otherwise. | | I get "continuing value" from all sorts of things I'd | never want a subscription for. If you're confident in | your product's ability to innovate and continue to add | value, you shouldn't worry about attrition. Providing a | fallback option makes it clear to me that you have that | confidence and that makes a huge difference during a | purchase decision. | danenania wrote: | Just to be clear, I'm not arguing that he should remove | the fallback option, just that a subscription should be | the default. I agree the fallback is a good thing that | reduces lock-in/shutdown risk. But that benefit can still | be offered alongside a yearly subscription. | adrianthedev wrote: | I mostly agree with you, but that's on more "traditional" | SaaS products. When it's a service. This is more of a | product. | | There are developers and agencies that buy Avo, build | something for a customer and then transfer the license to | them. The customer might not even know that the agency | bought something. They might not want to pay something | ongoing. | | Yes, one could make the case that "hey, you pay hosting | ongoing after the project is delivered, why not pay the | admin framework?" and that's fair, but I just don't know | if we're at that point yet. I'd love it if Avo would | bring us closer to that point. | danenania wrote: | I see your point, but I think it's just a framing issue. | It's great to have an option for people who are concerned | about this, but not at the expense of confusing customers | who just want to pay you and keep paying you for your | thing, and also killing your year 2 retention by making | it opt-in instead of a normal subscription. | | Looking at jumpstart rails, they seem to be doing exactly | what I'm suggesting. It's a simple per project per year | price, but then in their FAQ they explain that you stop | getting updates if you stop paying. | | On the agencies point, yeah I think it's normal for | agencies to sign a client up for a bunch of services they | need to build the project. You'll just be one more on the | list. | adrianthedev wrote: | Well... Avo's pricing is exacty like Jumpstart's (except | the $750 for unlimited). So pay $250, get Avo (or | Jumpstart) with a year of updates. When you stop paying, | you keep what you have until that point and no more | updates. Isn't that the same? Am I missing something? | | Also, you do make a point regarding agencies "sign a | client up for a bunch of services". I'll try and | experiment with that. Thanks for the nudge! | danenania wrote: | Right, that's exactly my point! Jumpstart has basically | the same pricing/licensing but doesn't frame it in a | confusing way. | | At first glance, it's just a yearly subscription per | project. Simple and standard. Everyone understands it. | | If I'm concerned about what happens if I stop paying for | jumpstart, I can find that information, but it's not | emphasized at the top like it is on your pricing page. | And the yearly subscription is the _default_ , not | something I have to opt into again every year. | | Most customers are just going to sign up for a yearly | subscription and never look back. It's better for the | customer and for jumpstart. | adrianthedev wrote: | Ok. Got it! It's mostly about the phrasing. Pushed | changes now. | | "It's better for the customer and for jumpstart." It's | true. | adrianthedev wrote: | but I see what you mean and I think you're not wrong. | andi999 wrote: | But you dont say how much the subscription is. | adrianthedev wrote: | Ok. I see that. I pushed an update to fix it. It's | $249/year afterwards. | bestinterest wrote: | Looks great from the demo | https://avodemo.herokuapp.com/users/sign_in | | My only suggestion would be to perhaps try out a beefer instance | for heroku or perhaps it is http/1.1 limitation of heroku and a | switching to one of the disruptors like render.com would help | performance? | | It also may completely be because I am in the UK. Clicking around | just feels slow 700-800ms+ response times, assuming its hosted in | US. | | Also another quick fix might be sending the request on mouse | down. I know unpoly (side competitor to Hotwire) does this | https://unpoly.com/a-up-instant | adrianthedev wrote: | Oh darn. I forgot about the demo site to beef up the hosting | for this post. I'll do that this week. I'll probably move it to | a separate instance. | | Yes, it's hosted in the US. | | Thank you for that and unploy. I'll have a look. | philip1209 wrote: | Looks cool - looking forward to trying it out. One thing I feel | is missing from rails today is a great text editor. ActiveText | feels old compared to editors like TipTap. | | Any plans or recommendations on standardizing on a new rich text | editor for Avo? | adrianthedev wrote: | I feel your pain. I see the talk in the community around text | editors and I monitor it closely. | | TBH, I haven't built anything like that before and I'm not sure | if my efforts would be spent in the best way if I tried to. I | added Trix to Avo because it played well out-of-the box with | Rails. | | I'll be watching the text editors race and will add the winners | to Avo. | fishtoaster wrote: | Very neat! My first thought was that this was a competitor to | https://bullettrain.co/. | | Looking into it a bit more, it seems more aimed at building admin | panels than whole apps. I guess it competes against tools like | https://activeadmin.info/? | adrianthedev wrote: | Great comment! It does intersect a bit with Active Admin, but | it's meant to do so much more. | | Avo is not meant to be an "obscure admin panel" where only the | core team members go to do some CRUD operations. It's meant to | be the interface on which you build your back-office. Something | that you'd love to give to your users from day one. Something | that will make you, the developer, look like a superhero, all | with little to no sweat. | mgkimsal wrote: | Seems reminiscent of both Nova and Filament for Laravel/PHP. Nice | work :) | adrianthedev wrote: | Nova was a big inspiration for me to build Avo. I don't think I | would have started Avo without using Nova before. | | My train of thought was "Rails helps you build apps fast! If we | had something like Nova it would make it 10x faster!". | | I belive the pair (Rails and Avo) is one of a kind in the | frameworks world. | mgkimsal wrote: | I suspect it won't be for long. The concept of the | programmable/standard 'resource wrapper' around the models in | a framework like laravel or rails provides a decent | separation for adding on standard behavior without actually | having to touch any of your existing code. If you're the | first in the rails world to do this, you won't be the last. | | Look at filamentphp as well for some inspiration/ideas. | adrianthedev wrote: | I agree with you. | | I'm aware that Avo (like Nova) is not suitable for any type | of app. It's for "most apps" where you use common things | like CRUD, dashboards, and cards. | | Speaking of competition, it's only going to make the | ecosystem better, so I'm all up for it. | mark242 wrote: | You may want to check your branding -- https://www.avo.app/ | adrianthedev wrote: | Do you think my branding is similar to avo.app? | pantulis wrote: | This delivers quite a lot of value in terms of developer time... | pricing seems incredibily low! | adrianthedev wrote: | Thank you for the compliment. Yes, I agree the pricing is quite | low. | | I launched this pricing scheme in March and since then I added | a ton of features that, IMHO, have increased Avo's productivity | 2x. I haven't updated the pricing yet, but I'll probably do it | soon. | | I also spoke with other indie developers and they agree that | the pricing is quite low. | | Thank you for the feedback! | mgkimsal wrote: | The pricing may be 'low', but you may help foster a larger | 'avo' ecosystem if more people are using it (AKA, keeping the | price lower). What was/is attractive about Nova and Filament | in the PHP world is that both have moderate ecosystems of | packages (free and paid) which extend out the base admin | system in niche ways. "avo" might be really good on its own - | coupled with dozens of custom add-ons that demonstrate a | community of people building their own solutions on top would | propel this even farther (imo). | adrianthedev wrote: | Tell me about it! | | Yeah, that's my vision too. To create the plugin system and | enable developers to hook into that ecosystem and earn | money. | Simpliplant wrote: | We've been using Avo on my latest side project | (https://aoe4world.com) and it has been great experience and Avo | saved us a lot of time that we would otherwise spend on building | admin interface. Highly recommended it. | adrianthedev wrote: | Thank you for the kind words. I appreciate it! | sandGorgon wrote: | this is very very cool. Any plans of making this for the js | ecosystem ? | | Unfortunately not all of us are on ruby...but everyone is on js. | Would totally love something like this on React/Next. | adrianthedev wrote: | Haha. Funny you should mention that. | | Me, together with my brother, built basetool, which should have | been Avo but for TypeScript (framework agnostic). You give it a | database URL and it will build the admin panel for you. | | Today was the day that I decided to sunset it, but you could | try to use it with docker or compile it from source. | | https://basetool.io https://github.com/basetool-io/basetool | sy_174 wrote: | fzaninotto wrote: | Are you looking for react-admin? https://marmelab.com/react- | admin/ | dchuk wrote: | > Unfortunately not all of us are on ruby...but everyone is on | js. | | This is such an interesting statement. | yoda97 wrote: | Yeah, I can already see someone screenshoting and posting it | to r/ProgrammerHumor | adrianthedev wrote: | I don't want to start anything here :P | mberning wrote: | Looks incredible. Seems like it is really tailored to small | -medium sized apps or devs doing client work. How do you deal | with objections around scaling out and lock in? | | I am loving the renaissance of "boring" tech stacks. | adrianthedev wrote: | It's Rails code under the hood. We do a little bit meta- | programming but try to keep things as basic as possible exactly | for this reason so we don't get in the way of the parent app. | | We mitigated the "tiny stupid" mistakes like n+1 with dedicated | includes option. The front-end is powered by Hotwire so a very | small JS bundle. | | We have a few customers that are running medium-to-large | applications with Avo and they are quite happy with the | results. I do admit they have started to do a bit of "magic" to | support their use cases, but we're in contact with them and | actively extracting things to make the developer experience | better and support more use-cases. One example is the tabs and | panels features that we're preparing to release next. | | Yup. Boring is good. It just works! | AncoraImparo wrote: | People still use rails? Wild. | adrianthedev wrote: | Haha. You're trying to stir sh*t up. | danbee wrote: | This looks very similar to Administrate by thoughtbot | https://github.com/thoughtbot/administrate | adrianthedev wrote: | Yes, they do intersect in some areas as you can build CRUD UIs | with both. Avo takes it further to give it a nicely designed | UI, all the "missing" features like extending the interface, | adding custom content, supporting all associations thoroughly | and more. | | I think of it like the next iteration of these kinds of tools. | | Have you built something using administrate? | danbee wrote: | Yeah, I've used Administrate a bunch. All those things are | possible in Administrate as it generates controllers that can | be customized, so anything it doesn't do out of the box can | be added easily. It's also easy to define custom input types | and content types. | chourobin wrote: | congrats on launching, what's the landscape now and who are your | competitors? it could be nice if you had a comparison page as a | way to sell it further. | adrianthedev wrote: | I'd say that the classic direct competition are Active Admin, | Administrate, rails admin. They are the OG admin panel builders | in the Rails world. They focus a lot on building just classic | CRUD admin panels. | | I focused on making Avo a whole app development platform. It's | not that hidden place where just a few team members go to | update some records, but the actual UI that you give to your | users. | | I'll make sure to create an "alternatives" page with | competitors. | sy_174 wrote: | gkoberger wrote: | Hey! Minor bit of feedback on the homepage UI; I saw the pricing | calculator and the big number wasn't obviously my savings (I | assumed it was the cost). I'd make sure that for anyone scanning, | it's clear the large $$ amount is savings vs the actual cost! | | (Also, while I do think it's important you come off as cheap, I | wouldn't lead with "saving money" as the main reason to use your | product. It looks like you've built something really interesting, | and you don't want early customers to only use you because they | think you're the cheapest option!) | | Overall, this looks really great... good luck! | adrianthedev wrote: | Wonderful! On point feedback! | | I had quite a tough time promoting the product and the homepage | calculator was one push to highlight one quality of Avo ($ | savings). But I agree, that's shouldn't be the biggest selling | point. | | I'll make sure to position the product differently. | | Thank you! | gkoberger wrote: | For what it's worth, I do like that it builds as you scroll | down! It shows how much goes into building an app. I wonder | if switching the focus to just the dev time, or even have | some sort of chart of all the other tools that slowly merges | into Avo? | | EDIT: Or a cute "Dev todo list" that gets crossed off | (https://roughnotation.com/) as you scroll down, and Avo | takes care of things for you? | adrianthedev wrote: | Those roughnotation.com animations look so cool! I don't | know how much time was spent on building those, but you | don't want to know how much time I spent on building that | calculator :grinning face with sweat: | nico wrote: | This is great. We definitely need more tools/frameworks like this | to allow for faster development. | | It reminds me of Bullettrain: https://bullettrain.co/ | adrianthedev wrote: | Yeah, the guys at bullettrain do a good job! I think of them as | being in the same category as Jumpstart. They give you the | tools to build the SaaS part of your app, Avo takes it from | there and enables you to move very fast with the rest of your | app. | upupandup wrote: | is there anything like Avo out there? This is great work but I'm | not a Ruby/RoR dev | MSkog wrote: | ActiveAdmin gets the job done well enough in my opinion. Not | nearly as slick as Avo though. | adrianthedev wrote: | Yeah, for sure! This post, or Avo's existence is not about | bashing other tools. | | Each project has it's own requirements and budget. | | Thank you for your message! | adrianthedev wrote: | There are a few free packages (Active Admin, administrate, | rails admin) built a few years ago that can help you build a | CRUD UI, but the conversations I had with developers is that | they are a bit annoyed with them. | | I built Avo as a modern alternative learning from the past | products and improving on them. | alexalx666 wrote: | I think it makes total sense for client work and almost no | sense for startups | adrianthedev wrote: | Why do you say that? Start-ups by definition need to move | fast and test out hypothesis. With a tool like Avo you | could prototype something, get it out to your customers and | get feedback fast. | | The secodn use-case is internal tooling. When I worked at a | start-up we had a lot of "shady" internal tools built fast, | crappy and unreliable (because it's just an internal tool) | and we always had issues working with them. | | I build a lot of internal tooling using Avo and the process | is quite painless. | canadiantim wrote: | Looks awesome. I'm a bit jealous Rails has this resource coming | from the Django world (although I know django admin also great | but has its limitations) | adrianthedev wrote: | I believe it's better than having nothing. I think there's a | lot to be done in this space and having someone or a team | working on it full time is the way to go. | canadiantim wrote: | Absolutely. I know there are some projects kind of like this, | but right now they are lost in my bookmarks folder | somewhere... I recall a couple of good admin dropin | replacements, I think one or two even have a paid-model which | I dig cause I'm more than willing to pay for django-specific | code that will save me development time. Likewise, I know | there's some good projects trying to do something similar to | Avo, but again I've lost them in bookmarks and my google-fu | isn't working to retrieve them. | adrianthedev wrote: | If you can, buy their product or sponsor the project. The | amount of work it goes into maintaining this kinds of | products is quite high. Spread the love! | focom wrote: | Yes its a shame django isn't as active as rails | canadiantim wrote: | Certain parts are and there is some encouraging development | work going, e.g. Tetra (https://www.tetraframework.com/) - | but yeah it can be sparse. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-06-21 23:00 UTC)